RE: RE: Re: recent sine-tone stuff, carillon

Daniel Wolf's points are all excellent. The one bone of contention I have
is:

>One point of view, and probably a controversial one at that, holds sine
waves
>to be what I'll call a "minimal harmonic timbre", and as such will be the
>minimal optimal timbre for both harmonic and subharmonic chords.

I would say that sine waves are in no way an optimal timbre for subharmonic
(utonal) chords. Of course, Daniel and I have been through this before, and
he claims he can tune sine waves to subharmonic chords with astounding
accuracy. I can't, and am drawn instead to harmonic chords (e.g, 10:12:15:17
for the 7-limit utonality) when trying to do so. An acoustic guitar is the
best timbre for utonal chords I've found so far.

Daniel,

I may retune the instrument and fine tune the partials in the future, or
perhaps over an extended time. I am not sure it will be more valuable
either way.

By mounting the bars at the .22 node, with velcro, the upper modes are
muted. I will also use a relatively soft striker positioned to strike the
antinode of the fundamental.
So far, I have found it possible to mute the upper modes -- the third can
be faintly heard, but decays
very quickly.

Actually, describing the instrument as a carillon is probably erroneous. A
"true" carillon is made from cast bells, 2 octaves or more, with a flemish
tuning (minor third partial), and is played on a mechanical
keyboard -pounded with the fists.

The original Schulmerich "carillon" that my instrument is based on uses
double brass rods (minor third apart) and a very complex tuning method that
yeilds a characteristic carillon sound (although I have not heard these
bells, yet)

It has never been my intention to mimic a carillon sound. If I wanted to do
that, I would have bought a sampler ;-)

Darren

>----- Finally, regarding Darren Burgess's carillon project. I understand
>that you have decided, for practical reasons, not to fine tune the 2nd and
>3rd modes. But I don't understand how you will eliminate the (untuned)
modes
>without use of a filter or mute of some sort. above and beyond the issue
of
>loudspeakers, the idea of getting a sine wave out of a struck rod sounds a
>bit strange, perhaps you meant only to say that the just intervals would be
>between the fundamentals? Even if you do filter out the upper partials,
>wouldn't you end up with something that sounds not at all like a carillon?
>